i just received a Walthers wide oil tank car from Walthers. It tank is white, but was wondering if that is prototypical for oil tanks in the real world, or would grey be preferred color by oil companie? I have some Microscale Flying A decals i am going to use for the tank and my Walthers truck served fuel oil distributor.
When you look at different tank farms, white seems to be the color of choice. I would suspect it’s chosen for the reflective nature of a light color, and sun light absorption.
Just Google tank farms, and you’ll see what I mean. Even much smaller set-ups like I see locally, the tanks are white, or very light colored.
Mike.
Any tank farms that I’ve seen, including the one here in town, has white tanks. I assume it is for the same reason that Mike stated above. We don’t need heat absorbing colors on tanks containing flammable liquids now, do we?
I have also seen tanks that were aluminium colored (dull silver), when it is weathered some it does look gray.
Have fun,
Richard
I have seen crude oil and petroleum products tanks in several colors, but white seems to be the dominant color.
All of the ones I’ve seen in California are white. I was just looking at images of refineries and they are all white also.
Municipal water tanks seem to come it different colors however including a dull yellow or green. These are totally different however making me think the color could be an indicator of contents.
It could depend on the era also. When I was young, many years ago, all those tanks were bleack in the area I lived, Québec.
To some extent it would depend on the grade of oil. Heavy fractions such as Bunker C were so viscous that they had to be heated to be pumped. Southern Pacific’s oil fired steam locomotives used one of the heavy grades. Their fuel oil tanks were usually black - any solar heating was a plus.
Ray
I notice in the original post it talks about an “oil tank car” from Walthers that has a white tank. If that is what the OP is asking about, I’d say for cars used in oil service that black tank cars are more common than white or gray. I go past a refinery going to and from work, and except for a green one every so often it seems like they’re all black.
Otherwise, tanks in an oil dealer could be black, white, gray, or silver. Tanker trucks used to haul oil could be painted in most any color, but having tanks that were black, white or silver would be most common I’d say.
I assumed he was refering to the wide oil tank model, and the word, car, was a mistake. 
And I assumed the same. No listing of any tank car as “wide”.
Mike.
Well I assumed that he was referring to tanks like in a tank farm too, but then re-read the post and wasn’t sure.
No, but he does refer to a ‘white tank car’. Wide for white could have just been typing error. Plus modern tank cars have much wider tanks than steam era ones.